Ain’t No China Cabinet Finale
I admit I’m no high craftsman when it comes to woodworking. I enjoy working with wood for two reasons: It’s a source of great frustration and good humor; and it satisfies my autumnal engineering urge to build crudely-made wood boxes on stilts, 10-feet off the ground, in which deer hunters like myself can freeze their asses off if they choose to do so, or at the very least keep out of the wind and stay dry at the same time.
Still I wonder if my mind is wholly there. Although measurements are double-checked before they are cut, and rudimentarily assembled at ground level to check conformity (and some resemblance of accuracy); then often laboriously hoisted sixteen feet onto the top of the walls, they often prove otherwise. This is when I have to acknowledge my serendipitous wisdom of buying several cans of expanding foam sealant and a few tubes of silicone caulk to make up the mysterious differences in fit.
One Saturday afternoon, I made an attempt to video my efforts as I stood atop a six-foot stepladder on an icy floor, half in and half out of the stand. I had to crank the lever of a ‘come along’ (cable hoist) over my head, that was hooked to an extension made of scrap 2x4s I had screwed to an opposite wall well above the peak of the other half-roof that was in place. As I have a love/hate relationship with my cellphone and its camera, I didn’t have a lot of confidence I could do it and still maintain my balance, but managed to capture the essence of DIY deerstand building during inclement weather that included gray skies, strong winds, snow, ice crystals, and freezing temperatures right up to darkness. My wife thinks I’m nuts to do this, but I am determined to get this project done even if I have to dress like an arctic explorer everyday to do it, for in addition I see it as mental and physical conditioning for deer hunting.
Achieving the impossible, I managed to record a few minutes of accomplishment and narration made under duress. I got the roof slid together and even had time leftover to note necessary adjustments I would do the next day.
This deer stand is called “Josh’s”, merely a placename for yet another deer stand positioned in various places about the farm, bringing the total to five. “Steve’s” is the oldest deer stand in the herd. Built on telephone pole legs in 1987, by 2018 it had begun to sag in places and tip precariously. Although it was straightened and remodeled to the 6.5/300lb standard, it still lacks the refinement of the newer stands. The 6.5/300lb call-out is the ceiling height and weight bearing requirement I established when our oldest grandson, personally boasting those numbers, began deer hunting up here.
“John’s Stand” is a evolutionary WIP, (work in progress) stand. It’s been moved three times and modified just as many. It was the first to have a 360-degree view on steel legs. Purchased originally as a tripod stand with a swivel seat, it was quickly deemed ridiculous and unsafe. It was dismantled and its platform enlarged to accept a box and a fourth leg. A wood ladder was built onto it, then finally higher walls, flip up plexiglass windows, and a very crude roof. Although it’s often noisy in the right wind, it’s been a very productive stand where it’s located now. Deer have become habituated to it and pay it little mind.
Most of the stands are basically four feet square with six foot walls; Josh’s is 48” by 60” just because the crate it was built from was that size, not because Josh is. No one is restricted to use the stand with his/her name on it. We have no female hunters yet, but our daughters enjoy the seasonal activity just as much as their brothers do, so there’ll be a stand with their name on it, somewhere, in the future.
Marty’s stand is the first stand that was built entirely on the ground with a flat roof. Four, four-inch square by ten-foot long, wood legs were bolted to it via steel adapters (called risers) that Jerry Solom built for it, and it was loaded onto a trailer and moved to its location laying on its back. Chairman Joe and Jerry helped me erect it using chains and a hoist Jerry had ‘jerry-rigged’ to the application -- and up it went. A wood ladder was built for it and that was that. It still needs some attention and may be moved as time goes on if I can contrive it somehow.
Craig’s stand was made from sections of a wood dock; a heavy-duty pallet that one of our laser printers was shipped on; the base of my old queen-sized waterbed that met it last bladder leak years earlier, and hundreds of recyclable Torx-head screws the beauty of which keeps me building deer stands -- and unbuilding them as necessary. You don’t get that forgiveness with nails. Jerry used to say, “Steel is real,” but in my case, “Wood is just as good.”
The creative urge takes many forms! You just have more forms than most people.
ReplyDeleteThe view from the window looks like it was done by an accomplished nature artist. Very cool! Actually, I can't tell whether or not it IS a painting or a large photograph or a nature view. Dang!
Sometime ask Woe about "scaffolding."
Funny you should mention scaffolding as I meant to include this in my original post. My late cousin, Jack Davidson, was the first in our family, that I know of, to begin using what he referred to as a scaffold to hunt deer, a small platform nailed or affixed somehow high in a tree, that he would sit in and wait for unsuspecting deer to walk past.
DeleteThis was thought of being a somewhat novel approach, because God and all his friends up here usually 'drove' the woods using a good number of hunters all in a line walking through woodlands and driving the deer out toward 'posters' i.e., hunters who stood in strategic spots, usually on the edge of a field, and who, if they had any sense about them, would shoot the fleeing animals as they came out of the woods -- and not the 'drivers' behind them.
Indigenous people probably came up with the scaffold idea as well as driving animals toward posters or off cliffs (Do you know there's such a buffalo jump place along the Pembina Trail here in Minnesota?) and knowing Jack, he very well might've read about the scaffold idea and thought he'd try that himself. He was very successful at it too, and inspired many an up and coming young hunter to try the technique.
The number of times I've stood or sat freezing in a moving tree on a cold November morning or evening is unknown to me now, but the memory of such misery has stayed with me forever and so my deer stand days were born. I even accepted using a propane heater at long last not so long ago; I don't think Jack ever did.
Love the door handle placement!
ReplyDeleteI advise not moving any current stands. It is much easier to build a new one "in situ." You can never have too many deer stands. I was present along with Jerry a couple of years ago when Craig's stand was set up on its long legs. This involved a line tied to a nearby popple tree. As the stand became vertical, the tree became horizontal. One false move would have catapulted the stand over or onto Rusty's house just to the north.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness we had Jerry there to advise against any of the false moves so typical of the old Raven staff.